


in a sense we're all winning

by spikenard



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Coming back from the dead, F/M, Ghosts, M/M, Multi, Queer Gen, They Were All In Love With Each Other, painful dramatic irony
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-18
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-05-27 13:11:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6286051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spikenard/pseuds/spikenard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Noah liked the thought of being put to rest. He liked the thought of resting. He did not like the thought of moving on, of leaving things behind. He had so little. There was so little that still made sense to him, and now he was alive, embodied, and he had nothing at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [queerling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/queerling/gifts).



> set in a nebulous post-series setting, after the inevitable death of richard gansey the third. absolutely not trk compliant. thanks to horology for looking this over.  
> i don't want to like, PROMISE a happy ending, but i am fundamentally a sap. please rest assured that ghost characters passing on does not qualify as a happy ending and will not happen on my watch.

The root of the problem was that Blue didn’t quite think of ghosts as human. Which, at the time, Noah had reasoned was probably fair: he wasn’t human anymore. He just wasn’t sure that was because he was dead. 

He didn’t mind, really; he could tell from the way Blue thought about it that she didn’t mean it in a mean way. It was just the usual - that he was less-than, that he was temporary, fingerprints left on the otherwise-clean wineglass of existence, a tape that kept unspooling and rewinding itself, all the best bits of playback worn out. She never would have said anything to him, to make him feel like that, which Noah liked. Blue’s thoughts filled him up, louder and more than the others. 

Ronan thought of Noah as a boy, only more durable. Adam thought of him as an extension of Cabeswater, of the line. They all did, but Adam most of all. Noah liked Adam. He liked all of them, of course, but he felt most like Adam, making his feelings drab and small. He had liked Adam at Aglionby. But then they woke the line, and Adam was Cabeswater, and Ronan was the Greywaren, and their thoughts shut him out. Not all the way, but enough. 

Noah had never been very good at Latin; he couldn’t properly understand the trees. Not even when he wasn’t visiting anywhere, when he’d been vanished. Noah was on the line, but he wasn’t of it. Not the way Adam and Ronan were. 

Gansey thought of him as a friend, with the same careless noblesse oblige with which he saw all his friends, something to be worried after. He had always been like that. Noah had never appreciated it at the time, when the vagaries of physicality still confounded him, but. It was nice. And Gansey felt responsible for him, for his death, which was strange; Noah’s emotions were generally wispy things, but he had echoed them back at Gansey, responsibility and life for death, death for life. 

Blue wasn’t like that, though. She’d liked him as a raven boy, and after she knew he was dead she had carried on in her practiced gentility. She thought of him as a ghost, too, though. A boy and also dead, and she had been kind to him, beyond kind. He hadn’t deserved her kindnesses. He was ashamed of that, now, the way he hadn’t been substantial enough to be himself, that he had scared her. Blue had asked him, once, whether he wanted to move on, and it had been a kindness so painful he had almost felt something, behind where he should have had ribs.

Her parents were psychics. Death hadn’t been real, solid, present to Blue until long after Noah met her. She still clung to what she thought about Noah, that he would flicker out someday, because believing death could be corrected, wasn’t permanent, would be too hard. Blue was going to kill Gansey, or Gansey was going to die: those thoughts thrummed behind everything Blue did or thought for months, spilled out around her like they were overflowing, until Noah could barely remember that they were supposed to be a secret. 

That was fine. The issue was: now Gansey was dead, and Noah wasn’t, and Blue wouldn’t look at either of them anymore. 

###

Eight days, Noah found out later, eight days after Blue and Gansey and Ronan and Adam had woken the sleeping king and received a boon from Glendower, Noah woke up covered in dirt, in the ruins of the old church, around his bones. 

Dirt was still rolling off him. It had been a shallow grave, and the rematerialization of howevermuch flesh was now occupying that space had disturbed it significantly.

Noah opened his eyes, and then shut them again. Dirt got in between his eyeballs and his eyelids, and he didn’t know how to get it out; he had the vague sense that rubbing would only make it worse. He lifted his hands anyway, and sat up, or tried to, and more dirt moved. 

It had been a very long time since Noah had last had eyeballs. 

He tried opening his eyes again, but it was too bright and it hurt, so he shut them. This was equally uncomfortable. There was dirt in his eyes, and things were too bright even with his eyelids all the way closed, pink light searing through the thin skin.

His eyes were watering, and he put his hands over them before blinking. He wanted to rub the dirt from his eyes, but his hands felt dry and powdery when he touched them to his face. 

He cupped his hands over his eyes, then, to block out the light, and tried to blink again. The dirt and grit mostly came out from under his eyelids. He stayed sitting up like that, with his hands cupped over his eyes, dirt puddling around him, his legs still buried. He could feel air rattling in and out of his body.

He sat like that for a long time. He was breathing. His body - his body! - was heavy, and it became too difficult to hold his hands up over his eyes, so he put them back down, and squished them into the dirt. It was too powdery and cracked to really dig his fingers into, though. Eventually Noah lay down onto his back. His eyes were still closed. 

Everything was very loud. His heart pounding against his eardrum, his breathing hoarse and unsteady. There were noises happening outside his body, too, but he could barely understand or process them. Noises like the wind breathing, louder shrill noises that penetrated his skull. He could feel the wind against his skin, and the dirt pressing down on his legs. He didn’t want to move them.

Noah could feel his heart, beating, and his lungs expanding and contracting. Something small with many legs crawled over his face, and he could feel that, too.

He was wearing clothes, of some sort. They covered his legs and his torso and arms, which was good, because they deadened the things that were happening to his body from outside his body. He could not feel the air on his skin where it had clothes on it, or the grainy unpleasant texture of the dirt against his legs. 

Noah sat up again. He did not know how long it had been, but then, he never knew how long things had taken, how long it had been. Time had never fully applied to him, when he was dead. He did not know what he was now, but his heart was beating and his lungs were pumping air into him like a bellows. Probably, this meant he was alive. 

This was a shame. Alive boys did not lie in the dirt and let bugs crawl over their lips. Noah opened his eyes. 

It was not as bright out. His eyes had been closed for a very long time. The piercing pink light behind his eyelids had disappeared, and now the light was hazy and indistinct. He could not see the sun in the portion of the sky visible to him, but it was not nighttime yet, either. He looked up.

He could see the sky. Noah couldn’t feel the line, or Cabeswater, and he was alive, but seeing the sky - really seeing it, with his vision blurred and his hair falling in his face - was something, too.

It was framed by crumbling walls, half-overgrown. He realized, then where he must be, and it was a quiet sort of realization in his mind, just lifting up a leaf to find something true underneath, barely any effort at all, but it still made his heart pump harder with the surge of it. Having a body again was strange, and terrible. 

He must be in the ruined church, where his bones lay. He wondered if this meant he was covered in grave dirt. He was pretty sure grave dirt had mystical significance, but he wasn’t sure this counted, since he hadn’t died here or rotted here, and since it wasn’t where his bones were marked. He should ask Blue. She would know. 

His heart pounded, and his breathing stopped for a minute. He had to concentrate harder, just for a moment, to start his lungs again. He couldn’t remember how to breathe on purpose. 

_Blue_. Noah missed Blue. He wondered how this had happened. He wondered whether she and Gansey and Ronan and Adam had found Glendower. He wondered whether this was the boon they had asked for, and he was sad. He hoped they had wished for something else. Something better. 

Noah did not think his spirit would have moved on. He did not remember much from when he was alive, because when he had been alive he had not believed in anything, or done much of anything at all. But he knew he did not believe in what Ronan’s priest said at the services he went to, about salvation or hellfire. 

He knew his parents did not believe in anything like that. Religion had always made his parents uncomfortable, but their religion had never had anything to do with the afterlife. It had always been about staying alive. 

When they had buried him, it had been about laying him to rest, and it had been for them, not for him. Well, maybe they had thought it was for him. Noah was not sure. He had not listened to his parents, or to his sisters, when he had seen them at his funeral; he had given them a message by way of Blue, and then he had disappeared. His bones off the line, he might not have been able to, but he had not even tried. 

Noah liked the thought of being put to rest. He liked the thought of resting. He did not like the thought of moving on, of leaving things behind. He had so little. There was so little that still made sense to him, and now he was alive, embodied, and he had nothing at all. 

The wind whistled through the cracks in the crumbled church. Noah looked up. 

###

He wasn’t sure how much later it was, but the sky had changed from dim grey-blue to a wash of orange, and then that had begun to fade. There was a noise. Noah felt himself flinch. 

He was lying spread-eagled on his back, his arms spread out so he could feel some of the overgrown plants with his fingertips. It was just weedy grass, but it was alive. Nothing had grown over where his bones were buried, nothing, nothing. 

The noise kept happening. It took him a very long time to figure out what it might be. He recognized it, but he did not know what it was. 

The noise stopped. And then, Noah knew what it was, and wished he did not. It was the noise of an engine. It was the Pig, and Noah was abruptly ashamed. He did not want anyone to see him like this, exhausted and overwhelmed and heavy, tethered to the ground. He did not know, then, that Gansey had died, but he could feel something, that something was wrong. No one came to visit his bones. He would not have liked that. So that they were here, now, meant something was wrong. 

Noah stayed where he was. He wanted to move, but he was tired, and his legs were heavy, and his body felt empty. 

He heard the car door slam, and then some low voices, and he heard Chainsaw scream. 

There were footsteps, he thought, and he closed his eyes. He did not want to wait for them to see him. He did not know what he would do. 

What happened instead was that footsteps stopped, close to him. Close enough that he could have moved his hand. He tried it, and his hand collided with a boot. That meant Blue or Ronan. 

Ronan said, “Jesus Christ,” loudly, and then “Noah’s moving,” and then the footsteps left. 

When the footsteps came back, there were more of them. Noah had opened his eyes. He tried to sit up, but his legs were still covered, so he just put his weight on an elbow. Ronan was back, and Adam. “Hi,” Noah tried to say, and his mouth shaped the words but he could not push breath through his ribs to make his voice. He waved, instead. Adam jumped. Ronan looked grim. But he always looked grim. 

“Noah?” Adam said, and Noah nodded. Then they were next to him, and Ronan was brushing dirt off his legs, and Adam held out a hand. 

Noah touched it, and Adam gripped Noah around the wrist and pulled. Noah would have gone insubstantial, would have flickered away from his touch, but he could not do that anymore. So instead, he was brought stumbling to his feet. He swayed, and felt dizzy. Dirt was falling down from his pants in clumps. 

Noah couldn’t see, all of a sudden. Everything was grey, and his heart was pounding. Something - someone - was holding him by the shoulder, keeping him upright. 

After a few breaths, the crumbled dirt indentation of Noah’s maybe-grave came back into focus. Ronan was silent. Adam was saying something, and Noah had not paid attention, because normally he could hear what Adam meant to say, which was not always the same thing as what Adam said, but generally more important. Now, all he had left were the words, and he could not understand them. 

“What?” Noah breathed. He coughed. There was dirt in his mouth. He coughed again, and he could feel himself gagging. Ronan put an arm around Noah’s back, and Adam’s hand was still firm on his shoulder, so it barely mattered that his knees were wobbly. Noah spat out dirt.

“What?” he said again, a croak, but at least audible.

Adam said something else. Noah wasn’t sure if it was the same thing or if he had changed it. But this time he heard Adam say “Blue,” so he nodded. 

“Blue,” Noah repeated, and nodded. The word made his tongue and his lips feel strange and curled. He wanted to see Blue. She would know what to do. 

Together, Ronan and Adam half-carried him out of the church. Noah was trying to work, but he couldn’t seem to control his limbs. He felt floppy. Like a starfish. 

When they left the arched entrance behind them, Noah saw the Pig, and he relaxed. (Adam and Ronan let out noises of distress and had to fight to keep him from puddling to the ground. Noah did not care. He leaned on them.) The Pig was here, so Gansey must be, and there was Blue, too.

Blue was standing next to the Pig, leaning on the drivers’ side passenger door, with Chainsaw on her shoulder. She was looking away from the church, back at the road. She was small, and tense, and uncomfortable. Something about her looked wrong, fundamentally. As they got closer, Noah realized what it was, and it was that she was wearing all the wrong things. Nothing was ripped, or handmade. She wasn’t wearing any jewelry he could see, and her hair was held back by a plain sweatband instead of clips.

Noah was perversely disappointed. He had wanted to touch Blue’s hair. He had been sure that seeing Blue would fix what was wrong, would make him happy again, but this was not any Blue he was familiar with. And then the feeling from earlier, the sickening swoop, came again. Something was wrong with Blue, and that was not about Noah; it did not matter that Noah was confused and distressed. Something was badly wrong. He did not know what it was. 

He looked at Ronan for guidance, but Ronan’s face was nothing, and Noah could not tell what it meant. He had never been good with just faces, or just words. When he tried to look at Adam, he found that Adam was looking away. 

Chainsaw let out a _kerraw_ and beat the air, sweeping into the sky as they got closer. 

“Blue,” Noah said, because he did not understand what was happening, and Blue turned around. Her face crumpled, but, horribly, she did not cry. Noah knew she was going to say something shattering, and he waited. But she didn’t. 

No one had to. Noah waited, and looked, between Adam’s avoidance and Ronan’s shuttered gaze and Blue’s fierce determination not to cry, and then to the hazy figure he could see through the Pig’s windshield.

“Why is Gansey still in the car?” he asked. It took him a few tries to get the words out. His mouth was clumsy, and he could still hardly stand. 

“Noah,” Blue said, finally. “Gansey’s dead.” 

Noah wanted to argue, but that made sense. He was alive, so Gansey must be dead. He was jealous that Gansey was dead, and then ashamed of his jealousy.

“Okay,” he said, because he was not sure what the appropriate response was. Blue looked angry, and he could feel Adam going stiff next to him. The hazy figure in the Pig’s front seat flickered like heat over tarmac, and then it was in front of him, where all of them could see it.

Later, Noah would find out that this was the first time they had seen him, that Adam had scried for days, and that Cabeswater had shown him nothing. Just rest. Just darkness, and sleep. They had not seen him or Gansey since his death, and Blue had thought them gone forever.

“Hello, Jane,” Gansey’s ghost said.


	2. Chapter 2

Noah’s impressions of the next several hours blurred. He could no longer trust his memories to be accurate to the general sense of a situation, to have a fundamental truth to them. All he could trust his memories to do was to replay what was happening to his body. Right then Noah wasn’t sure he’d ever feel grounded enough to remember anything. He was no longer untethered in time or space or mind, but he still felt untethered somehow.

The ride to Monmouth passed in uncomfortable silence, scenery smearing past the windows. Blue was driving. Noah rested his forehead against the passenger-side window and let the uneven roads rattle his skull. He wondered if this could bruise his brain. He wasn’t sure when Gansey’s ghost had disappeared, but it must have happened before they drove back.

Adam and Ronan were talking quietly, in the back seat. Noah couldn’t hear or understand what they were saying.

He remembered being six years old, his sister asleep across the backseat, at the tail end of a long drive. Everything was dark except the garage lights, and his parents were talking quietly in the front seat, their speech smudged by the hour and the interrupted darkness and his exhaustion and their lowered voices, their consideration for his exhaustion. His father had picked him up and carried him to bed.

Noah wasn’t sure how real that memory was. It felt true, but he hadn’t thought about it once the whole time he was dead. He didn’t know if it had faded when he was a ghost, only to flicker back once he had the body that had experienced it. But then it might not have been his memory at all, just something borrowed from someone else, pilfered from some other raven boy his spirit had drifted past.

But that was the ride to Monmouth: that same sense of hazy disconnection, quiet and incomprehensible speech, staring out the window. Gansey’s ghost -- Gansey -- had disappeared after his first flickering reappearance; not even Blue’s touch could keep him.

Noah wanted to go to sleep. Noah wanted someone to carry him to bed. Noah wanted to go to his room, in Monmouth. He’d never slept there, properly. He badly wanted to try it.

###

Adam and Ronan poured Noah into bed. Blue had gone inside Monmouth and immediately curled up in Gansey’s unmade bed; Noah had needed help to stagger across the main room and into his bed. Adam left right away again; Ronan stayed long enough to help Noah out of his untied sneakers, and carefully rolled up Noah’s school tie. 

“Do you feel right?” Ronan asked, as Noah was fumbling with the buttons on his shirtsleeves. Noah blinked at him. “Your body,” Ronan said, like he hated having the words dragged out of him. “Did I get it right?” 

“Stupid question,” Noah said, and Ronan grunted and ducked his bald head. Noah felt a little bad. He hadn’t meant to insult Ronan. He was sure Ronan must have worked very hard, and worried, if he’d had to ask for reassurance. But Noah couldn’t think how to reassure him without lying at least a little, and Ronan deserved better than that. After that Ronan didn’t say anything else, just pulled Noah out of the rest of his dirty buried clothes and left. 

Noah curled up on the bed in a white t-shirt and his boxers. He pulled the blankets over himself and closed his eyes. 

###

"By the time we're seniors," Whelk said, staring at the ceiling and fiddling a thread loose in the edge of his uniform sweater, "we'll have our pick of girls."

Noah finished shoving the window open and jammed his Algebra 2 textbook into the frame to hold it open.

"Yeah," he said.

Whelk was stronger than him, somehow innately, or perhaps from years of athletics, but Whelk was sprawled out in a puddle of sunshine, pontificating, which meant Noah had to be the one to open the window in their room,  _ Fidelity _ , enough to let some air in.

Noah didn't know how Whelk could stand to be fully dressed. Their room was on the fourth floor of the old stone dorms, and Noah felt sticky from the dip of his spine to the nape of his neck, even stripped down to his boxers and with his uniform shirt unbuttoned to the waist. 

Noah wasn’t sure if this was a dream or a memory. If it was a memory, he knew when it had happened: his freshman year. Whelk had arrived on campus the previous day, eyeballed Noah, and demanded the bed by the window. Noah had moved things without complaint, eager to stay on good terms. Maybe make friends with his roommate. Whelk had thanked him, absentmindedly.

Whelk came from money in a way Noah didn't, effortless with his manners. When he opened his mouth, Noah expected him to talk like one of the movies Adele liked. Like Cary Grant, voice dramatic and half-garbled. 

His large eyes and lips and the dramatic swoop of his straight, dark hair over his forehead made him look like a calf, cow-eyed Hera as a boy. His face was mobile and expressive, made for silent film. Whelk was the kind of handsome that looked best in black and white.

They had just been dismissed from the year's convocation assembly, three hundred and fifty boys in full uniform crammed into the campus' chapel. It was the first time Noah had ever been in a church, and he had not listened to any of the announcements, busy staring at the stained glass and shimmering gilt.

###

Noah did not want to dream about this. He hadn’t enjoyed Aglionby, at first. 

Noah had moved onto campus a week early, during the new students' orientation. He'd had a week to embarrass himself in front of the rest of the freshman class, too enthusiastic, not quite the right sort. Eventually, Noah quit participating in the ropes course activities at the edge of the campus' fenced in woods. 

He hung back on the soccer fields, keeping his distance from the the more athletic boys who were kicking a ball around. Noah mostly spent that first week trying to be smaller, trying not to burst out with words, leaving his skateboard under his bed, refusing to let himself spin in dizzy circles of excitement. He could tell he was talking too much, and that knowing he talked too much just made him talk more. But they didn’t have any time to themselves, at first.

He eyeballed the campus' buildings from a distance. He itched to explore. He wanted to see what the insides of these grand structures looked like. The only buildings the freshmen had access to were their dorms and the cafeteria, unlike the returning students who had remained over the summer, drifting into the athletic complex and the library in loose and laughing packs of sun-bronzed shining-haired Protestant entitlement.

###

Noah thought about Gansey. Noah thought about Blue. The dream changed.

###

Whelk had kissed Noah, once, the summer before he lost his money.

They were both staying in Henrietta for the summer. Whelk's parents were on vacation and expected him to make his own summer plans; Noah's were on vacation with his sisters, and expected him to spend the summer bored and reflecting on the past years' misdeeds.

Noah's latest girlfriend had just broken up with him. He had walked in on her with Whelk in their dorm room. Barry had been pale-skinned and glowing, a vision of lean muscle, the same stubborn sunbeam Noah had noticed on their first day still puddled between his shoulderblades.

For a moment Noah had not been sure what he was seeing, and then his girlfriend had shrieked and rolled out from under Whelk, exposing a significantly more tanned expanse of naked skin, before pulling a sheet up to cover herself.

"Oh, stop," Whelk said, irritable as he always was when Noah interrupted him at something. "As if he hasn't seen it before."

Noah hadn't. He wasn't looking, though; Whelk was standing up to deal with the condom and Noah's gaze was tracking him almost without conscious intent. When he looked back at the bed, his girlfriend was pulling her clothes back on, still holding the sheet up with one hand.

Noah was disappointed. He had liked his girlfriend. She seemed to be expecting something from him, but he couldn’t tell what.

“You just caught me in bed with your best friend!” she had said. “Don’t you  _ care _ ?” (Noah thought about Blue).

“Not particularly,” Noah said, stupidly. After she left, he could feel his heart beating in his red cheek.

Whelk sighed. He was back in his bed, shirtless, the sheets still rumpled. Noah perched himself on the edge of his own bed, and tried not to stare too obviously.

"Well," Whelk said. "There goes the only fun thing I had planned for the summer."

Noah's stomach twisted. He looked away, focusing his gaze on the fringed hole on his knee. He'd gotten it climbing the fence to the headmaster's house on a dare from Whelk; the tip of the metal fence post had gouged out a dime-sized patch of flesh when Noah misjudged the angle at which to sling his leg over. 

He had fallen back over the fence and landed on his face. Whelk had laughed. Noah had iced his bruises alone in their room while Whelk was at a party in the dorm lounge. Whelk had back with two cups: a drink for himself, and something hard to pour over Noah's knee.

"Disinfectant," he'd said, lugubrious and lubed up on liquor. He'd stayed with Noah the rest of the night, instead of going back to the party; when he'd fallen asleep, he'd pillowed his cheek on Noah's bony shoulder. (Noah thought about Ronan.)

Noah rubbed the fringe from the hole between his thumb and forefinger. He'd liked his girlfriend. His cheek throbbed.

Whelk sat up on one elbow. "Hey, Czerny," he said. "Come over here."

Some minutes later, Barry rolled off of him with a disgusted noise. Noah had enjoyed the weight pressing him down into the mattress. Whelk's mouth was full and sneering, and a little shiny with Noah's spit. Noah couldn't stop looking up at him.

Whelk sighed and pushed Noah off his bed. Noah slid onto the floor with a small thump.

"That's a bust, then," Whelk said. Noah waited for the punchline to the joke Whelk must have been setting up. He waited for Whelk's laugh. It didn't come.

Instead, Whelk looked down at him and tilted his head. The sunlight made his hair look like feathers in an oil spill; his backlit face looked like an art museum.

"What do you know," Whelk said, "about ley lines?"

###

Noah heard Gansey's voice, saying those same words. He opened his eyes, and woke up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey it has been a Literal Entire Year since i updated this WHATS UP

**Author's Note:**

> title is from frank o'hara. find me on [tumblr](http://spikenards.tumblr.com)!


End file.
